Product manufacturers have increasingly turned to flexible manufacturing in the effort to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Flexible manufacturing typically involves the production of the multiple variations of a product on a single assembly line. For electronic products, product differentiation usually includes modifications of the behavior of electronic circuitry used in the product, and in many instances, the difference in electronic circuitry among various product models is minor. In some applications, such modifications are accomplished by programming programmable components within the circuit. In other applications, the circuit must be physically modified by adding or removing components or portions of the circuitry.
Physical modifications of circuits can be attractive for certain applications where only minor circuit modification is required. For example, this approach can be cost effective if the manufacturer can build or purchase large quantities of circuits of a given configuration, such as the configuration used in the most popular product model. The manufacturer could take advantage of quantity discounts, while being able to convert the circuit for lower volume models by altering a portion of the circuit. This approach has been successfully used for circuits implemented on flexible circuit substrates in which a segment of the substrate containing a portion of the circuitry is removed to alter the behavior of the circuitry. The segment removed may be as simple as an electrical conductor, electrically connecting two areas on the substrate.
In a typical manufacturing operation, the removal of segments from flexible circuit substrates to modify circuit behavior is accomplished using a device incorporating a hole punching mechanism. The use of hole punching devices for circuit modification has several consequences for the manufacturing process. First, it is usually necessary to perform the hole punching step before the installation of the circuit substrate as it would be cumbersome to do otherwise. Second, the hole punching device occupies manufacturing space, and multiple configurations may be required to handle circuit substrates with different geometries. Third, these devices may be costly to implement, operate, and maintain.
The benefits of having easily modifiable circuits have been recognized and exploited. However, there exists a need in the art to have a more efficient and cost effective solution to circuit modification.